Or have a removable rack that you can pull out and slide into a cupboard. No need to have two machines connected to water, drain, and electricity. It works this way, more or less, in industrial settings. You have trays that go into dishwasher, and then go into storage racks.

I recently rented a house for NYE with a very nice kitchen. It had FOUR drawer style dishwashers! I imagine this is what the owners do all the time.

What do you do if you've used all of your bowls but none of your plates?

Have a margin - somewhat more bowls and plates than you actually need.

Wash the clean plates?

Yeah, the machines now are performing unnecessary intermediate steps, or rather I should say could perhaps perform extra steps that overall would make the design of the machines easier.

What we want long term is a machine that does all the work, e.g. that can spit out requested items and which when returned to the machine will clean and store them (the same idea works for any of clothing, cutlery, tools, shoes etc).

Why should I have to take the folded clothes or washed dishes and go pack them away? Won't it be easier if the machine just does that for me? If I want a glass I just browse the stored inventory and it spits out my requested item.

I do just that and it works nice for 4 people family